Many vehicle audio systems provide users with the option to save frequently-used or preferred radio stations as “presets,” or stored radio stations that can be easily or quickly accessed using one or more inputs of the audio system (e.g., depressible buttons or “soft keys”). As an example, a typical audio system may have six presets, or memory locations, for AM radio stations and twelve presets for storing FM radio stations. Upon selection of a given preset radio station, a radio receiver included in the audio system is automatically tuned to the AM or FM radio frequency band associated with the selected station, and an audio signal broadcast by the station is played by the audio system through one or more speakers included in the vehicle.
In most cases, radio station presets are useful only if the vehicle remains within a broadcast range of each station. Once the vehicle travels outside this range, for example, to a new geographical area, the audio broadcast by the corresponding preset radio station may no longer be accessible and/or may be replaced with audio being broadcast by another radio station within the new geographical area. Thus, the vehicle's preset radio stations may become obsolete as the vehicle travels to distant locations.
When traveling, the vehicle operator can try to search for new radio stations using the radio tuner and manually re-program the radio station presets with any newly discovered radio stations. However, this manual re-programming process can be tedious, time-consuming, and frustrating, especially when there are a large number of unfamiliar radio stations to sift through in a given area. Some vehicle audio systems include an auto-programming feature that automatically assigns accessible radio stations to each preset, or memory location. While this feature may be used to quickly re-program stored presets with new radio stations, existing auto-programming software does not take into account user preferences or tastes (e.g., preferred radio station genre(s)) or other factors that may be used by the vehicle operator, herself, when selecting certain radio stations over others. For example, such software typically selects, as presets, the first twelve FM radio stations and the first six AM radio stations that have sufficient broadcast strength at the vehicle's current location.
Accordingly, there is still a need in the art for an improved vehicle audio system for identifying relevant local radio stations while traveling through a new geographical area.